REWIND & PLAY

Kids are invited to rediscover the quirks of the 1990s as they travel through the alphabet letter by letter.

Though the 1990s might feel very recent to parents today, their kids may be unfamiliar with many of that decade’s cultural touchpoints. Knuckman’s debut picture book introduces 26 separate items or settings that were once commonplace, including arcades, Blockbuster Video, chat rooms, and more. While not all of the references are exclusive to the ’90s (friends and homework endure), they paint a nostalgic picture of a bygone decade with a focus on leisure and playtime for children. Many of the references are to technologies that have gone extinct, like dial-up internet and landline telephones. (“T is for Tamagotchi. We’d hatch with delight. Loving each beep, morning, noon, and night.”) Popular media—like the video game Oregon Trail and The X-Files TV series—and trends in fashion also appear as running themes. This alphabet primer will delight middle-aged parents rosily regarding their own childhoods, but younger readers may not be as invested. Despite the emphasis on “not hav[ing] screens to swipe at all day” and the fact that “U” stands for “unplugged,” many of the letters invoke items like arcades and Napster, which once faced similar criticisms from technologically averse adults. Knuckman’s illustrations engagingly play with the candy colors and crazy patterns of the decade.

A playful trip down memory lane that attempts to bridge generations of readers.